A Foreign Sky Protected Me
by lurknomoar
Summary: Kirill walks away. What does he leave behind, and what is he walking towards?


Author's notes:

I wrote this story because I wanted to know if it was even theoretically possible for Kirill to have a happy ending, and I came up with witness protection as a possible solution.

This story is not graphic, but there are references to some horrible things that feature in the source material, such as prostitution, human trafficking, murder and rape. Additional warning for alcoholism and some homophobic statements made by certain characters.

The title is a reference to the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, and her beautiful and terrifying Requiem: 'No foreign sky protected me / no stranger's wing shielded my face.'

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In the Scottish Highlands there is a small seaside village where the people are tough, the rain is relentless and colourful fishing boats take to sea in the grey hour before dawn. Five years ago a stranger arrived to help out in the kitchen of the local inn. He said he came from Russia. He didn't say much else. At first people were wary of the newcomer, of his strange clipped accent, his razor-sharp face and prominent bones, his worn turtlenecks and his colourless buzz cut, his menacing quiet and his sudden unsettling laugh. He never did anything identifiably wrong, never even raised his voice, but people tended to feel ill at ease around him, unnerved by the way he kept glancing around rooms and startling at the sound of engines, as if he was constantly expecting something painful to happen. He was an outsider and he was strange, but nobody could deny he was good in the kitchen, that he worked 12-hour days without complaint, and weekends too, that he moved with a skittish, nervous sort of efficiency and responded to any praise with a baffled blank look his co-workers soon learned to interpret as surprise. When somebody asked him why he came over to the UK, he shook his head and only said 'can't go home, trouble with family', and considered the discussion closed.

After a while people got used to him, and he got used to people. He still had the same suspicious, vigilant shake in his bones, but he stopped looking at people as if he couldn't decide if he wanted to punch them or to protect his own face. Sometimes he whistled strange lilting songs while he stirred the soup, and he added beetroot to shepherd's pie claiming that's what made it 'proper food'. For all his quietness he turned out to be decent company, listening when talked to, going along when invited, laughing along when everybody laughed. He was especially good with children, and for some reason they seemed to love him, clinging to him and asking him to say things in his funny accent, wheedling to be given leftover puddings. He was deferentially respectful for the rare tourist, and confidentially kind to patrons. He was stiltedly, awkwardly friendly to everyone, but every time he was offered a beer or a shot or anything alcoholic, he said 'nah', twisted his lips into a bitter lopsided smile, added 's the devil's drink', and could not be persuaded otherwise. He became a part of the village, and after two years, most people tended to forget he hadn't always lived there, that he hadn't always done the same routinely unusual things he was doing, like going for early morning runs on the beach around the time the fishing boats came in, regardless of the weather, always running as if he knew exactly what was chasing him. Or living alone in an almost unfurnished bedsit, and taking extra shifts at work just so he didn't have to go back there. He made good food and made no trouble.

One early spring morning, in his third year in the village, the returning fishermen found him sitting slumped on the quay, shaking soaking wet in the salt-smelling rain, curled up around an almost-empty bottle of vodka and crying with helpless, keening sobs. The men tried to help him up, but he snarled and punched and bit, fighting like a cornered animal even though he was so drunk and weak he could hardly stand. He seemed to have forgotten English and he used his native tongue to dry heave curses at them and at himself and at the entirety of creation. He was a wretched painful sight to behold, and the fishermen could spare no time for a sad drunkard, especially so early in the morning. But the Murray brothers didn't want to leave him, since he was one of their own, after some fashion. He kept up his angry hiccupping sobs while they carried him to the spare room in the inn, and he wouldn't tell them what had happened, but when the rough square hands of Jack Murray pulled a blanket over him, he opened his eyes, and said, with remarkable clarity, 'I am sick because I can't go home'. Then he passed out.

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Three years ago.

The moment the kingdom you believed you ruled collapses into nothing, you are standing in the empty restaurant, early in the evening but already drunk, reeling at the words Kolya, your Kolya had just said. Kolya is the police, and the police is coming for your family, and he has been lying to you and he won't be lying to you anymore now that everything is over. You raise a half-hearted hand to hit the bastard, the traitor, but he blocks the blow far too easily. You fight, you spit, you call him the bitch of the police and the whore of the FSB, but he shows no anger in return.

'I had to stop it.' He says, unapologetically.

'The vor took you in!' you shout. 'We took you in! You owe us a debt so fucking large your death would be cheap to repay it!'

'I had to.' He repeats quietly. 'Because of the girls.'

'The girls?' you laugh. 'You tell me you went to the police because of those dirty bitches?'

'It's human trafficking and child prostitution.' He sounds tired. 'I don't give care about the smuggling, or even the hits. But you were selling teenage girls to be fucked by strangers.'

'So what?' you snap.

'Do you want that to happen to your nieces?' he asks, still eerily calm. 'Do you want to see some big Ukrainian man to come and throw little Marya on her back? How about Tanya? She's already fifteen, so she'd be older than most. Or the twins?'

You can't answer, you just keep shaking your head.

'Or the baby, the little girl Semyon wanted you to drown.' He continues. 'Do you want her to be one of the bitches in the stable, hmm? Shot full of drugs and fucked ragged every night? Is that what you want?'

'So you had to do it.' You concede, just to stop him saying things that turn your stomach and fill your mind with confused terrified questions. 'So you had to turn on us. Why did you even tell me?'

You know you sound more frightened than angry, and the weak little anger you feel cannot even reach him, it falls back on you instead to choke the breath from your lungs.

'Because you are the boss and you are my brother.' He says, as if he hadn't just betrayed the ones he calls kin. 'And if you know what's happening, you choose what happens next.'

'What choice do I have?' you snap. 'Would you corner me with your policemen, then tell me to fight them? Or to run from them?'

'If you run, we will find you, and if you fight, we will kill you.' To hear this from the man you relied on to always say the stable trustworthy truth, it hurts with a strange wild hurt.

'What is my choice then?'

'You can do nothing, the police will come, and you will go to prison. You can do something, work with us, tell the truth and help clean this up. Your word would help put away those who brought the girls over to the UK, and in return you'd get to walk away.'

'Away?' you laugh. 'Away from the vor?'

'Yes, even from them.' He says, and he sounds as solid and certain as always. 'You're eligible for witness protection. You testify, we send you to a clinic to get you sober, give you a new name, get your tattoos off, and nobody will ever know who you were.'

'I'd rather die.' You say, without thinking. Prison scares you more than you admit, but losing your name, losing your rank, losing everything you've ever wanted to be, that's even worse, that's unthinkable.

'Kirill.' He says, and he's using the voice he uses when he thinks you are stupid, you are not stupid enough not to notice that. 'Kirill, I don't think you want that.'

'Who gives a fuck what I want, you sold me out to the police!' you shout, furious and righteous. 'Why not shoot me yourself, why not throw me into the river?'

'Because I don't want you to die.' He forges on. 'I want you to go into witness protection. To get out.'

'Don't you fucking get it?' you tell him. 'Here, I am a vor, I am my father's son, I have stars over my heart. Without the stars, I'm nobody, so why do you think I would even want to walk away?'

You mean it. Witness protection is for people whose options are either an ugly death or a beautiful normal life somewhere with gardens and dogs and children, things like that. There is nothing for you out there. You options seem to be resisting the police until they put a bullet in you, spending the next decade or more in shut in a prison where most inmates have good reasons to want to fuck you up, and living out a dreary empty existence somewhere in the middle of nowhere, forbidden even to pretend that you were once somebody, not the pathetic stumbling wreck you are now. The bullets sound best, without question.

'Why?' you demand again.

He doesn't answer, but the corner of his mouth curls up in an amused, almost fond smile. He grabs you hard by the back of your neck and pulls you close, pulls you into him until his face is inches from yours and he smells like leather and sweat and you can feel how warm he is underneath his jacket and he is right there just right there in front of you and you break. You fall forward to kiss him on the lips with a graceless mindless ferocity. A few seconds pass, and despite the haze of alcohol and adrenaline they are the clearest, brightest seconds of your life so far. But he doesn't kiss you back, of course, of course he doesn't, and you pull away with an ugly wet sound. You don't dare to open your eyes, silently bracing yourself for the slap, the punch, the kick that always comes, bracing yourself for the humiliation that has always been inevitable for as long as you remember. After all, you have been afraid of being found out for as long as you remember, and you are only comforted by the thought of having to die soon anyway.

But his hand on your cheek is as gentle and heavy as it always has been.

'Walk away, Kirill.' He repeats. 'You will do fine.'

It's a no to the kiss, a no to staying with him, a no to the thousand things you don't want to want from him. But it's the first yes you've had in your life, a yes to you, a yes to who you could be, a yes to the things you could be allowed to want, a yes to maybe even having them someday, and nothing, not the police or the vor or your father or even your own common sense, nothing can stop the desperate overwhelming hope rising in you. You drop your head onto his shoulder, dizzy and defeated, and breathe 'Okay. Okay.'

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Three years later.

The next day he gets back to work, and people make a point of not mentioning what happened at the quay, what happens each time he has nothing to occupy him, when his hands shake and his lips twists and he starts hacking the empty chopping board with the breadknife. The only thing that changes is that now everybody knows well enough never to offer him a drink. He seems thankful for that, although he never says so.

Some months later, he moves into the cottage of the youngest of the Murray brothers, and he does not sleep in the guest room. They don't announce that they are together, but they don't deny it either, they don't hold hands but their shoulders touch. Soon the entire village knows, and the rumours start up, then die down. Some of the older folks grumble a little, but most seem to think that poor old Jack deserves somebody nice to be around the house, especially since his wife died. There are worried murmurs about his eight-year-old daughter, and whether or not it is right to raise a child like that, but little Tessa herself does not seem bothered, she is glad to have a new uncle who cooks her chicken soup and braids her hair. People stop wondering why he can't go home to Russia and why he doesn't talk about his family, because they think they know, and they are almost right.

The outsider may not always be happy, and he may not always be good, but he certainly isn't an outsider anymore. Everybody knows the man with the worn turtlenecks and the slowly smoothening accent, the lingering smell of baked potatoes and warm kitchens, the man with the too-wide smile and the too-deep eyes, the man with the bearded partner and the pigtailed daughter. They know him to be hard-working and decent and not much more broken than everybody else is. Nobody knows his name used to be Kirill, that he lived in a hard family of hitmen and whoremongers, that he walked amongst the thieves in law. Nobody knows, not even the fisherman he learnt to love with a fearful fond love, that when he lets himself stand still for a second and look out over the sea, he thinks of the man who sold him and saved him. He will never know where that man, that driver and brother and traitor went, if he is even still alive, but as the years pass he has less and less desire to find out.

He has a man who is kind at his table and warm in his bed, he has a daughter who looks up at him without fear, he has friends who help him peel potatoes and mock him only in jest, he has a hundred people who smile and nod when they see him. He hurts nobody and nobody hurts him, and he used to want more than this, but that was back when he couldn't imagine that this was something he could ever have. He has gotten away and he is alive and that is enough. He kept only one thing from his old life. Years ago, at the turning point between his old and new lives, when the nameless nervous policewoman asked him to pick a new name to live by, it was a choice he didn't have to think about. He chose Nikolai.

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THE END


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